It is March and it is cold here in New England. There is still a blanket of snow on the ground from February’s snow storms and it is very icy out there. This has caused my family to spend more time indoors than usual this winter...and yes, we all feel a bit cooped up and batty! Yesterday when I dropped my daughter off at school it was 5 degrees. This is what my window looked like. A mountain of frost.But being cooped up and cold is not why I am writing this post. Last week, after de-icing my car, I drove to my daughter’s school to volunteer. Children’s book author and illustrator Brian Lies was visiting. It was a window similar to this one several years ago that caused his young daughter to call on him and tell him what she saw in the frost line: it wasn’t a mountain, no, it was a bat swimming in the ocean. And that is how he decided to write his book, Bats at the Beach. Has your child ever seen something and shown you a new creative perspective on it? One of the things I loved about being a visiting artist at schools was watching children tapping into their own creativity, coming up with ideas beyond my own imagination and reminding me that creativity is limitless. When Brian asked the kids what it would be like if the bats came to the school library(where he was giving the talk) he looked up at the ceiling. He asked the kids to think from the bat’s point of view. If a bat hung by the lights and looked up the bat would see the pattern of the recessed ceiling panels. Except what he saw in those panels was a pattern of a giant honeycomb or waffle iron. Then he asked the children to imagine a bat pouring batter into the ceiling and creating a ginormous waffle to eat!Keeping a fresh eye, open to this kind of inspiration and visual interpretation is what has brought magic into his work and keeps not just the young ones inspired..but this grown-up child as well!!